Gloria Steinem, a key player in the women’s movement during the latter part of the 20th century, died on Wednesday, her foundation announced. She was 92.
Steinem died at her home in New York City, The Washington Post reported. Her death was announced by Gloria’s Foundation on social media. No cause of death was provided.
For more than half a century, Steinem personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol, according to The New York Times. Her tinted aviator glasses and streaked-blonde hair parted in the center, and the publication of her magazine, Ms., made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.
Steinem got involved in the feminist movement in her late 30s, the Times reported. As a journalist in 1969, she attended a “speak out” of women talking about illegal abortions.
“That speak-out was the beginning of activism for me,” Steinem, who had undergone a secret illegal abortion herself at age 22, told The Associated Press in an email in 2022 while reflecting on the reversal of Roe v Wade. “Either our control over our own bodies is equal, regardless of sex or race, or we’re not living in a democracy.”
She got involved, and her charisma, media-savvy persona, coupled with a strong work ethic, made Steinem a political and cultural force.
Steinem became a symbol of second-wave feminism, the Post reported. She was involved in the expansion of the movement beyond women’s suffrage into a broader campaign for equality in the workplace, in the home and under the law.
Gloria Steinem will go down in history as one of the most important activists of all time, leading a movement for the equality of half the world: its women.
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) September 3, 2026
She lived a long and passionate life dedicated to this vital and basic cause.
She did it with intellectual precision,…
“In my heart, I think a woman has two choices,” Steinem once said. “Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.”
“Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” her foundation wrote. “Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”
Steinem led protests, wrote essays and made speeches, the Times reported. She also helped establish rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women and founded groups that promoted women’s rights. She also helped raise money for women’s causes, according to the newspaper.
Christine Stansell, a history professor at the University of Chicago, once wrote in Glamour magazine that Steinem “was to the women’s movement what Martin Luther King Jr. was to civil rights: the galvanizer,” the Post reported.
Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women's liberation movement, has died. She was 92 years old.
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) September 3, 2026
In 2023, Rita Braver spoke with Steinem about the origin of the magazine, which aimed to push feminism into the mainstream: "We didn't want… pic.twitter.com/RioOrjKsTD
Ms., the first glossy national magazine created, owned and run entirely by women, made its debut in 1971, the Times reported. Its goal was to capture and channel the rising sense of female empowerment and eliminate sexist biases, according to the newspaper.
Gloria Marie Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March 25, 1934. She attended Smith College in Massachusetts.
She won a Chester Bowles Asian fellowship to study in India but she quickly abandoned her classes, the Times reported. After returning to the United States, Steinem spent a year in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a director of the Independent Research Service.
She moved to New York in 1960 and began working as a freelance journalist; her articles appeared in Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Family Circle and Life. She was also a contributing editor at Glamour and New York.
Steinem made news when she wore a cottontail and infiltrated the Playboy Club in New York during the early 1960s, according to the Post. She exposed the poor pay and degradation suffered by the Playboy bunnies in a 1963 article that appeared in Show magazine, according to the newspaper.
Steinem dealt with many critics through the years. Journalist Gay Talese noted early in her career that “You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.”
Steinem said an editor at The New York Times Magazine propositioned her. Clay Felker, the editor of New York magazine and Steinem’s mentor, said he gave her an assignment because she had “great legs,” the Times reported.
Appearing on Larry King’s talk show on CNN in 1990, Steinem was stunned when a female caller greeted her cheerfully, then told her to “rot in hell” because she had ruined “the beautiful American family,” the AP reported.
©2026 Cox Media Group
